The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Em Sowles is a fifth-year PhD student and graduate research assistant in the Physics Department at the University of Maine, and a member of the University of Maine Graduate Workers Union (UMGWU-UAW), which represents 1,000 workers across the University of Maine System.
Graduate student workers across the University of Maine System (UMS) do teaching, research, and administrative work that keep the universities running. Our union has been in negotiations for our first union contract for over 600 days, since November 2023, much longer than average for first contract negotiations.
When we began bargaining, UMS said they wanted to work together to improve conditions for graduate workers. Nearly two years later, I’m tired of platitudes and inaction.
My work is a good example of how central graduate work is to the UMS mission. I have worked both as a graduate teaching assistant, where I helped teach introductory physics to undergraduate students, and as a graduate research assistant, where I study student understanding of physics concepts to improve classroom instruction. I care deeply about my students’ education, and my working conditions directly impact my students’ learning conditions.
Throughout my time working at the University of Maine, I’ve had late pay and lapses in health insurance that take me away from the work I want to focus on — teaching and researching. That’s why I joined my union. And that’s why I continue to fight for a strong union contract. I want the universities of Maine to be better places to work, study, and live. Yet graduate workers are historically among the lowest paid and least protected workers within the University of Maine System.
I make the minimum monthly PhD stipend of $2,222, and many of my colleagues have to survive on even less (the minimum for master’s degree students is only $1,889). Graduate work is a full-time endeavor and we can’t just get a second job. I carefully balance my monthly budget. I rely on the campus food pantry. I’ve panicked when urgent car repairs have drained my savings.
We struggle through graduate school instead of being recognized for the important work we do as teachers, scientists, and academics. Our pay trails every other New England land-grant university. Even factoring in the local cost of living, graduate workers at the Universities of Maine need more than a 25 percent raise in our minimum pay to match our peers’ pay at the University of Massachusetts and University of Connecticut.
Week after week in the bargaining room, our bargaining team painstakingly lays out for UMS the issues graduate workers face and our proposals to address them. In response, UMS administrators mostly sit silently as their outside lawyer (from the same anti-union law firm that is working to destroy unions at Starbucks and other employers, Littler-Mendelson) either rejects our proposals outright or offers vague explanations for why they won’t agree.
In response to our proposal of a living wage, UMS proposed pay cuts for many graduate workers. Despite our essential work, UMS continues to deny us what we consider appropriate compensation and benefits. With federal funding cuts creating serious instability in academia, it is more important now than ever that we have job security and a livable wage.
To me, it’s insulting that UMS would cut wages for graduate workers, and then give top administrators annual bonuses that are more than a graduate worker’s entire annual pay.
A union contract that benefits graduate workers and improves the Universities of Maine as a whole requires the UMS bargaining team to work productively with our union bargaining team. Graduate workers are collectively calling upon the UMS team to have the same constructive approach and sense of urgency as the University of Maine Graduate Workers Union team. Every day we go without a contract is another day some graduate workers struggle to afford to live in the communities where we work and study, another day without basic dignities that should be afforded to every worker.
600 days is far too long. If the University of Maine System is serious about the research and teaching mission of our universities, they will work with us to expeditiously reach a fair first union contract that benefits all graduate workers across the system.
